Lower Merion High School's robotics team, known as Dawgma 1712, recently capped an exceptional year with a quarterfinals finish at the FIRST Robotics World Championships in St. Louis, Missouri. FIRST Robotics teams design and build robots that are programmed to complete specific tasks. Dawgma 1712 members, guided by staff advisors and mentors from local business partners like Lockheed Martin, spent nearly 30 hours per week building a unique robot customized to meet the competition's strict design parameters. In St. Louis, the team placed 8th among 75 teams in the opening round, earned the distinction of Alliance Captain, and ultimately advanced to the quarterfinals – finishing in the top 2% of all teams in the world.